So, now your ready to start posting articles in WordPress. There are two approaches to writing articles on the web. One, is to just write about whatever you want randomly and hope someone finds your content of interest. The other is to start out with a plan. I’ll cover search engine optimization of websites in another article, but for now I thought I’d introduce some things to think about as you plan your articles.

If you want to attract a large number of visitors to your site your articles most be valuable, timeless, original, and personable. By valuable, I mean, your articles should be of value to a large percentage of people. Try to write about subjects that people are definitely interested in. You can find out what people are reading about by going to:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

http://www.google.com/trends

http://technorati.com/

http://www.alexa.com/

By timeless, I mean, the article should be of interest to a large number of people a month from now. This is important, when your trying to create a large content driven website. Let us say, you want to have 100 interesting articles on your site. If you create 5 per day, but 4 of those five will have no value to anyone in a month, you are working against yourself. Instead of reaching your goal in 20 days, it will take you 100 days, to reach your goal.

Original content, is invaluable. There are far to many aggregators of information as it is. The only way you can make your site different, is to create content that is not available any where else. So, go get inspired by something, and create some original content.

Finally, do your best to talk like a real person. Try to be funny, tell stories and don’t get stuck writing articles that are aimed only at pleasing the search engines. Many search engine optimization tricks are geared toward making it seem like a website is of value. Do your best to appeal to real people and search engines, by just making a valuable, timeless, and original site. Now, Back to WordPress posting.

Everything you Ever Wanted to Learn About Posting in WordPress

I’m assuming, you are logged into your WordPress.com account right now. At the top of your page, drift your mouse over the link titled My Dashboards. When you do, a drop down window will show all the blogs you currently have set up at WordPress.com. Click on one.

You are now on a catch all page. Under Right Now, you’ll see a listing of your total posts, pages, categories and tags. The posts, are your articles. Pages, refer to static pages you created, that are more similar to normal website, rather than blog pages. Categories, refer to how you have grouped your articles, with other similar articles. Tags are keywords, that help you define the topics covered in a post.

The Recent Comments section, will list all the comments others have made on your blog. Incoming Links, shows you other websites that are linking to your site. The Your Stuff section, shows all of your recent posts. What’s Hot, describes what other sites are talking about.

The Section labeled QuickPress, allows you to post onto your blog without thinking about the styling of the post. You just plug in your title, content, tags and whether you want to add media and hit Publish. If you want to save a draft, which will keep others from seeing the post later, click Save Draft instead.

To Add an Image to your Post, from somewhere on the web

Click the first icon next to the words Upload/Insert

Click the From URL tab, at the top of the window that just opened.

Type a descriptive title for the image

Type a description of the image, in the Caption box

Choose whether you want the image aligned to the Left, Center, Right, or Default (None) format

Type a link to the image

Click the Insert into Post button

To Add an Image to your Post, from your computer

Click the first icon next to the words Upload/Insert

Click the From Computer tab, at the top of the window that just opened.

Click the Select Files button

Choose the image or images, you want to use

Click the Open or Select button, depending on if you have a PC or Mac

After the image uploads, you can edit the image, by clicking the Edit Button

Give the image a title

Fill in the Alternate Text, which is what someone will see if the image doesn’t load

Fill in a Caption that you wish to associate with the image

Fill in a Description of the image

If you want the person sent to another page if they click the image, fill in the Link URL, or click None

Choose whether you want the image aligned to the Left, Center, Right, or Default (None) format

Choose the desirable size for the image

Now click on Save All Changes or if you changed your mind click on Move to Trash

If you have already uploaded images, you’ll find them under the Media Library tab

To Add a Video to your post from your computer

Click the second icon next to the words Upload/Insert

If you have a video upgrade, you can upload your own videos

Click the Select Files button and select the video file. Once the video has been uploaded you’ll see a message stating “This video is being processed”

Check your media library, in a bit, and when your video is ready click Show

Now enter the Title, Description, and Rating

Click Insert into Post

To Add a Video to your post from another website

Just a Note. You are able to link and show your visitors videos for free, as long as they are not being stored on a WordPress Server.

Click the second icon next to the words Upload/Insert

Click on the From URL tab

Here is a list of some common video websites

Blip.tv

DailyMotion

Flickr Video

Google Video

Kyte.tv

LiveVideo

PodTech

Redlasso

Splashcast

TED Talks

Viddler

Vimeo

Vodpod

YouTube

Paste the link to the video you wish to upload

Click the Insert into Post button

To Add Audio to your post from another website

Click the third icon next to the words Upload/Insert

Type the web address of the audio file you want to upload

Give your audio file a title

Click insert into post

To Add other Media to your post from your computer

Click the fourth icon next to the words Upload/Insert

Recognize that you can only upload the following types of files:

jpg / jpeg: JPEG image files, which are normally used for photos on the internet

png: PNG image files, which try to be good at showing photos and few color images

gif: GIF image files, which are normally used when a photo has few colors and gradients

pdf: Adobe PDF file

doc / docx: Microsoft Word documents

ppt / pptx: Microsoft Power Point documents

odt: Sun Microsystems Open Office Document

Click the From Computer tab

Select the file you want to upload, then click Open or Select

Click Insert into post

To Add other Media to your post with a URL

Click the fourth icon next to the words Upload/Insert

Recognize that you can only upload the following types of files:

jpg / jpeg: JPEG image files, which are normally used for photos on the internet

png: PNG image files, which try to be good at showing photos and few color images

gif: GIF image files, which are normally used when a photo has few colors and gradients

pdf: Adobe PDF file

doc / docx: Microsoft Word documents

ppt / pptx: Microsoft Power Point documents

odt: Sun Microsystems Open Office Document

Click the From URL tab

Enter the web address (URL) of the file you want to upload

Give the file a Title

Click Insert into post

The Rest of the QuickPress Dashboard Page

The last two parts of the page, show you your recent drafts and stats on the activity of your blog. Recent Drafts are links to posts you have not made public yet. The Stats section shows you how many people are visiting your site and what they are looking at and searching for.

Posting the Proper Way

To finish off this post, I’m going to walk through the best way to post your articles. First click on the link labeled Posts, on your left sidebar. A new window will open titled, Add New Post.

In the big unlabeled box at the top of the page, enter the title of your post. You see under that, the same icons we talked about previously, that allow you to upload different forms of media. Under that is a mini word processor area. You will find the following text editing tools here:

Bold Text

Italic Text

Strike Through: Which people use to eliminate a thought, without deleting it. I’ve never understood this concept.

Unordered List: If this list your reading had little dots next to each item, instead of numbers, you’d have an unordered list.

Ordered List: The list format I’m using currently

Block Quote: When used white space, shows up, before and after a block quote element. It also insert margins for the block quote element.

Alignment Icons: Positions your text to the Left, Center or Right

Hyperlink Buttons: One allows you to create hyperlinks, while the other eliminates them.

Insert More Tag: When you decide that you want to cut off the article, you can insert the More tag to effectively split the post (mark where the excerpt officially ends).

Proofread Writing: Checks for spelling and grammar errors, based off of the preferences you set on your Profile page in WordPress.

Toggle Full Screen Mode: This will make the posting area take up your whole browser window.

HTML Styling Drop-down: This will allow you to quickly add HTML styles to your article.

Underline Text

Align Full: Will stretch your text spacing to make your left and right margins line up with each other.

Select Text Color

Paste as Plain Text

Paste as Word

Remove Formatting

Insert Custom Character

Outdent: Creates a paragraph, in which the first line is left justified and each additional line is indented.

Indent

Undo

Redo

Help: Gives you additional information on Rich Text editing

The next box is labeled Excerpt. You should create excerpts for all of your articles. It is a brief description of your article. By writing one, you allow your visitors to easily see what content you have that would be of interest. RSS feeds from sites that use excerpts for their articles are much preferred. Also search engines love the keyword heavy excerpts. So just take the time and write them.

It is considered a nice gesture to use trackbacks. If you write a post and reference a post from somewhere else, you should paste the URL to that post your referencing here. It provides website owners, with the ability to see who is linking to them. Think of it as a kind gesture.

In the Discussion area, you have to decide if you want others to be able to comment on your article. It’s in your best interest, search engine wise, to leave both of these boxes checked.

That leaves us with the last three editing areas. Once you write your post, you have to decide what to do with it. Under Publish, click on Save Draft, Preview or show it to the world, by clicking Publish. In the Publish section, there are other options concerning, who you want to see the post or if it should be published later.

That ends the “Posting Articles in WordPress” Post. In the next article, I’ll cover the Media, Links, Comments, Ratings and Poll links in your left sidebar.